/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12300982]

Is it usual to not understand 90% of Song of Myself, from leaves of grass, on my first reading, or am I retarded.

[Anonymous No.12301093]

>>12300982
Live more.

[Anonymous No.12302576]

Whitman is literally just lists of things. He says what he sees. It's blunt and exhausting but in a way that is what makes it so much more powerful than flowery bullshit.

[Anonymous No.12302607]

I wrote this after an intense self inquiry while suffering bouts of moderate depression and a great deal of social anxiety lately. As I wrote it I remembered Walt Whitman, and suddenly realized I had the key to him.

>We act according to what we are and also according to what we think we are. This is the human distinction. We alone, of all the creatures, behave in a manner which is altered by our self perception.

The actor knows his character. He attempts to play it. He plays before others, which I shall discuss in a moment. He also plays to himself, which I now treat of. Thought is monologue: the performance of the self to the self. In the act of witnessing the self perform to the self, there is criticism. Here I use the word criticism in it's full, evaluative and interpretive sense, without necessarily meaning negative criticism. The criticism of the self by the self may be symbolized as follows:

1. Shame before the self
2. Grandiosity before the self
3. Self sameness

Shame before the self is the sensation of embarrassment at one's own thoughts, imaginary actions, words or ideas. Grandiosity before the self is the feeling of vindication and pride before the self-- it involves being swayed by the self's own rhetoric. By now it should be clear that there are two selves. There is the self that speaks the monologue, and the self that hears it. There is the self that acts, and the self that criticizes...

[Anonymous No.12302642]

I undertook an intense self inquiry while suffering bouts of moderate depression and a great deal of social anxiety lately. As I wrote it I remembered Walt Whitman, and suddenly realized I had the key to him.

>We act according to what we are and also according to what we think we are. This is the human distinction. We alone, of all the creatures, behave in a manner which is altered by our self perception.

>The actor knows his character. He attempts to play it. He plays before others, which I shall discuss in a moment. He also plays to himself, which I now treat of. Thought is monologue: the performance of the self to the self. In the act of witnessing the self perform to the self, there is criticism. Here I use the word criticism in it's full, evaluative and interpretive sense, without necessarily meaning negative criticism. The criticism of the self by the self may be symbolized as follows:

>1. Shame before the self
>2. Grandiosity before the self
>3. Self sameness

>Shame before the self is the sensation of embarrassment at one's own thoughts, imaginary actions, words or ideas. Grandiosity before the self is the feeling of vindication and pride before the self-- it involves being swayed by the self's own rhetoric. By now it should be clear that there are two selves. There is the self that speaks the monologue, and the self that hears it. There is the self that acts, and the self that criticizes...


I've been reading some of him and it absolutely holds up. Witmans multiple selves refer to the voices in his head which affirm him or deny him. He talks about feeling shame when speaking poetically, which is the voice of self criticism. And this is intensely, off the charts ironic.his poems are asking where the inner voices come from (nature?). They are also invoking his personal self, the Walt Whitman known to his family, friends, coworkers etc, the character he played in everyday life. He asks how he can be so many selves at once.

I have a long way to go in apprehending him but man, I am so excited I finally made some headway and can see some of his genius.

[Anonymous No.12303665]

Bump. And I know my post is very long but I think it's very high quality and could be helpful to others.

[Anonymous No.12303675]

>>12300982
Sorry sweetie, you have to be gay to understand Whitman.

[Anonymous No.12303682]

>>12302642
Where are these passages from?

[Anonymous No.12303698]

>>12303675
How the fuck can someone even be gay for Whitman?, like holy shit it's Santa Claus let me suck your dick

[Anonymous No.12303699]

>>12303682
I wrote them

[Anonymous No.12303707]

What's an example of something you don't understand?

[Anonymous No.12303717]

>>12303707
Please dont reduce Whitman to a vague pantheism/mysticism and a collection of nicely phrased observations of the world.

That is the most superficial and stupid reading one can make of him.

[Anonymous No.12303836]

Here is a good example of
>>12302642
"O baffled, balk’d, bent to the very earth,

Oppress’d with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,

Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I have not once had the least idea who or what I am,

But that before all my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet untouch’d, untold, altogether unreach’d,

Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,

With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,

Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath."

[Anonymous No.12303856]

>>12302642

Daddiobaby, that's a hot post.

[Anonymous No.12303859]

>>12302642
>>12303836
BASED
A
S
E
D

get in this thread, boys. it's going down in here tonight.